Editor's Note

The Charge

"Though we like to believe we have control of our lives, in a single
moment, everything can change."—Kyle

Opening Statement

When the second season of Kyle XY came to a close, it was almost the
perfect ending for the show. Teenage super-genius Kyle and his adopted family
had taken down not one but two sinister conspiracies, everyone had fallen in
love with everyone they were supposed to, and the characters all found
themselves in new places in their lives with bright, new futures. Then, in the
last minute of the season finale, the creators broke out the cliffhanger.

As the third season began, viewer numbers dwindled, possibly because the
show went up against ratings giant 24, and cancellation quickly followed.
For fans, though, who stuck with the teen sci-fi adventures of Kyle and company,
ABC Family has brain-blasted the final ten episodes onto DVD. Will the oft-asked
question "Who is Kyle XY" finally be answered?

Facts of the Case

Kyle (Matt Dallas) manages to rescue Amanda (Kristen Prout, Elektra) from a secret organization called
Latnok and its charismatic leader, Cassidy (Hal Ozsan, Redline). Fallout from that event, however,
strains Kyle and Amanda's romance. Kyle's super-genius counterpart Jessi XX
(Jaime Alexander, Rest Stop), sensing
their strife, moves in with the family and realizes her feelings for Kyle.

• "It Happened One Night" Amanda is kidnapped!
Then Kyle is kidnapped! Fighting and escapes and telekinesis and explosions!
Also, don't forget various romantic goings-on at the after-prom party.New Kyle power: Freezing solid objects so they become brittle enough to
fall apart with a punch.

• "Psychic Friend" Kyle tries to keep Amanda from
learning of her abduction—she was blacked out the whole time. When a
psychic warns that Amanda is in harm's way, Kyle wants to protect her without
her learning the secret.New Kyle power: Aquaman-style
super-swimming!

• "Electric Kiss" Kyle and Jessi devise a way to
free Amanda from Latnok's influence. Amanda, however, wants nothing to do with
Kyle after he and Jessi get closer than expected.New Kyle power:
Channeling bioelectric energy through a kiss.

• "The Company of Men" To get over their female
woes, Kyle, Josh and Declan hit the town for a night of male bonding and
debauchery. Meanwhile, Jessi makes a revealing confession to Lori. Also, mystery
man Tom Foss (Nichols Lea, The X-Files) returns.New Kyle
power: Mathematical precision at bouncing-coins-into-shot-glasses bar
games.

• "Life Support" While on a road trip, Kyle, Josh
and Nicole get into a car accident, causing a pregnant lady's water to break and
sending Nicole to the emergency room. Now, Kyle not only has to deliver the
baby, but he has to make a deal with Latnok to save Nicole.New Kyle
power: Kyle is suddenly a doctor after speed-reading and memorizing a
handful of medical textbooks.

• "Welcome to Latnok" In return for saving
Nicole's life, Kyle must work for Latnok. Surprisingly, he finds that they might
be less evil than they originally appeared. Meanwhile, the family tries to dream
up ways to help pay Nicole's hospital bills.New Kyle power: He
builds a hoverboard!

• "Chemistry 101" A Latnok-sponsored party is an
opportunity for romance, as some characters plan to seduce their crushes, while
others scheme revenge against an ex. Kyle hopes to reconnect with Amanda by
establishing a chemical formula for emotions like love.New Kyle
power: He comes up with a pheromone-based way to measure people's
compatibility.

• "The Tell-tale Heart" Jessi is overwhelmed with
worry about what happened to her mother, and whether Latnok might be involved,
so Kyle tries to help her. The secrets they discover could alter both their
futures and their feelings for one another.New Kyle power: It's a
"shared dreaming" thing, when Kyle is able to see Jessi's
memories.

• "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" It's
awkwardness galore when Kyle's family invites Cassidy to dinner. This is also an
opportunity for Kyle, Jessi, Lori and Declan to engage in some amateur espionage
to learn some more about Latnok.New Kyle power: Kyle's telekinesis
is now so powerful that he can throw a person across a room with a thought.

• "Bringing Down the House" After learning what
Latnok is really up to, Kyle and company embark on a desperate effort to stop
it. The series concludes with two big confrontations, one between Amanda and
Jessi, and the other between Kyle and Cassidy.New Kyle power: Kyle
unleashes his inner Hulk. Kyle smash!

The Evidence

The two previous seasons of Kyle XY put an emphasis on Kyle's
interactions with his family and friends first, with the ongoing mythology about
Kyle's creation by a conspiracy often hovering in the background. This season,
though, the mythology comes to foreground, and drives everything that happens.
There's relatively little "downtime" for Kyle and his family to do
ordinary family stuff, as they've done in the last two seasons. Latnok's plans
and Cassidy's devious scheming keep the season moving from one episode to the
next. Also, this season spends a lot more time dealing with the "bigger
picture" issues of the series, with Kyle's existence raising questions
about what it means to be human, the importance of interaction with others, and
the conflict between truth and lies.

An ongoing theme of this series has been honesty versus lying. An early
episode in season one had Kyle learning a difficult lesson about lying, and a
major arc in season two had Kyle forced to lie to his family in order to protect
them, and the emotional strain this put on him. Eventually the truth set Kyle
free, so to speak, in that coming clean was what helped everyone in the end. As
this season begins, Kyle must once again compromise his principles by lying to
Amanda about her abduction, because he believes this will protect her from harm.
This time, once the truth is out, things don't turn out as well, as it further
separates Kyle and Amanda. Many questions are raised by this. If Kyle had been
up front about everything from the beginning, would Amanda have understood, or
would her reaction have been the same? Was he really ensuring her safety by
hiding the truth from her, considering that a Latnok baddie later goes after her
anyway? As a certain acerbic medical professional likes to point out,
"Everyone lies." In one of this set's commentaries, the creators talk
about the nature of corruption, in that no one can be honest all the time, and
we all have to let corruption into our lives in order to survive and get by. The
internal conflict we all go through as we gradually discover this is exaggerated
in Kyle, as he faces this corruption first hand in this season, still wondering
if he's doing the right thing.

Although not exactly a villain, Jessi definitely fills an antagonist role in
the series as Kyle's opposite in many ways. She doesn't struggle with ethical
dilemmas like Kyle does, she only sees whatever it takes to complete her
objectives, without consideration as to who might be hurt as she does so. After
her experiences with Kyle, though, Jessi is a lot less cold-hearted. Instead,
she longs to have a family, as he does. It's something of a cheat to have Jessi
move in with the family this season, but it offers her an opportunity to
interact with them to demonstrate the differences between her and Kyle. Although
she has the same powers as Kyle, she's a lot more vulnerable. She wishes to
belong and to feel love, but she's too emotionally distant. It's only through
Kyle that she experiences some joy in her life. This season, Jessi admits her
feelings for Kyle, and sets forth on her attempts to seduce him. This sets up a
"Betty and Veronica" situation for Kyle, as he's torn between the good
girl and bad girl in his life. This season is Jaime Alexander's best work as
Jessi, and the scenes where she searches for her mother in "The Tell-tale
Heart" are powerful and gripping, thanks to her performance.

As the newbie to the main cast, Hal Ozsan as Cassidy makes for an
interesting villain. When we first meet him in the pilot, there's no mistaking
his evilness. Then, as we get to know him, he comes across as friendly and
charming, with the whole "evil" thing being a big misunderstanding.
That's true of Latnok as a whole. In the season premiere, they're kidnapping
people, sending trigger-happy thugs after our heroes, and watching over it all
from a futuristically-lit conference room. Then, a few episodes later, we're
reintroduced to Latnok as it apparently really is, a cluttered laboratory filled
with science geeks, located in an ordinary college campus. I like the idea of
the secret conspiracy made up of just ordinary folks, but there's a disconnect
in continuity between this Latnok and the one in the premiere. Kyle has the
occasional moment where he confronts Cassidy with a "Yeah, but you
kidnapped Amanda" line, but these are fleeting. Perhaps more about Latnok's
operations would have been explained in a fourth season, but we'll never know,
will we?

Josh and Andi's romance continues to be the most interesting subplot, as
Bilodeau shows that's he's a capable serious actor and not just comic relief.
Lori's main character arc this season is her romance with a guy who may or may
not be involved with Latnok. She also has some great catfight moments with
Jessi. Still, Lori spends most of her time reacting to what's happening, and
never taking any direction of her own. The same is true for the parents, Stephen
and Nicole, who offer advice and support, but not much else. With so much of the
plot having to do with Latnok, both Amanda and Declan get diminished screen
time, but are consistent when they are on screen. She's still the nice girl
slowly developing her own sense of assertiveness, and he's still the
sometimes-nice and sometimes-a-jerk guy who's always hanging around.

For a modestly-budgeted cable show, Kyle XY looks great on DVD, with
crisp visuals, clean colors, and deep, solid blacks. The audio is good, but
doesn't seem to use the 5.1 tech to its fullest. The big deal about the extras
is the "Future Revealed" featurette. While I'm sure most fans would
have preferred a filmed ending featuring the actors as their characters, this
featurette instead has the writers and producers revealing their master plan for
the series, where it would have gone, and how it would have eventually ended.
From there, we get two commentaries from the executive producer and head writer,
one of which spills even more info about the show's unfulfilled future plans. A
handful of deleted scenes rounds out the extras.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

Nitpicks: • In case you haven't already guessed, this season
is not the place for first-time viewers to jump in blind. The show's mythology
is neck-deep by this point, so newcomers will want to start with season one and
go ahead from there. • The season premiere takes place on the
night of the prom, but after that there are pretty much no references to the
kids in school. Shouldn't they be worrying about stuff like finals and maybe
even graduation? If this season takes place during summer vacation, I'm fine
with that, but couldn't they at least mention that? • So Kyle
uses his new ice powers to freeze a door solid so he can break it apart with a
single punch, but then, in the same episode, he merely kicks down a
similar-looking door. This makes the whole ice thing look to me like special
effects for the sake of special effects. • We never get to meet
Andi's parents? What a missed opportunity. That could have been the greatest
"teenage guy meets the girlfriend's parents" scene ever made.

Closing Statement

The show's creators like to call Kyle a "superhero of the soul," in
that although he does occasionally rescue damsels from bad guys, what he really
does is "save" people on an emotional level. Everyone who meets Kyle
ends up as a better person in some way. Based on this, the creators speculate
that Kyle would have changed the world, being an inspiration to millions like
some sort of sci-fi Gandhi. Will Kyle's viewers at home be similarly inspired?
That's hard to say. Kyle XY is low-key, character-based sci-fi, more
interested in matters of the heart than in speculative concepts and
heart-pounding action. The show isn't without its clichés—at times it
wallows in them—but overall, it's some nice comfort food TV.